


A Little Friendly Fire

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [24]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Androids, Battle, Demons, F/M, First Homosexual Feelings, First Time, Forbidden Attraction, Friends With Benefits, Genderplay, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Magic, Major Character Injury, Married Couple, Open Relationships, Other, Portals, Robot Sex, Superheroes, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, The Avengers Pull Together, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-08 06:50:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Steve Rogers saw KITT embodied in the female Jade android that Tony Stark had created, he knew he was in trouble — and even more so when Tony and KITT proposed a friendly bedroom romp after a disastrous mission, because the probability that Steve is going to discover previously unsuspected aspects of his own sexuality is very VERY high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Based on conversations with teljhin and antigrav concerning Steve's reaction to fem!KITT in the third chapter of "Bella Sera", and how he might react to the proposition of having sex with her while Tony looks on. (Hint: he winds up liking it a _lot_ more than he'd anticipated, especially after Tony decides to join them...)
> 
> 2) Fem!KITT is based on East Indian actress Aishwarya Rai:  
> http://25.media.tumblr.com/2adc929e58e7114506abf37d6e9a75d7/tumblr_mkw0c7N6Gp1qipih9o1_1280.jpg

Tony's voice prowled out of the shadows that bordered the bed, dusky as a panther: "Y'know, she really loves having her pussy licked." 

" _Tony!_ " Steve was pretty sure that this time his ears really were going to spontaneously combust. He had to close his eyes for a couple of seconds, because Kitt's _husband_ was giving him advice on how to sex up his _wife_ (fellow husband?), and that was all kinds of wrong — and considerate, in a weird sort of way — and yeah, hot enough to make his cock feel like it was going to rip its way out of his khakis. 

"And nibbled," Tony continued, undeterred. "And sucked. There's this trick I do with my tongue where I —" 

Kitt was laughing, albeit silently: Steve could feel the subtle vibration of it in her mechanical frame, which lay beneath him on the mattress in the careful circle of his left arm, and when he opened his eyes again he looked down to see merriment dancing in her green gaze. He was still fully clothed, but she… well, she'd had him unzip her dress after Tony had arrived and taken up his observer's position in a comfortable chair that would provide full support for his injured back, and now she was clad only in a thoroughly delicious black-on-black ensemble of lacy bra, equally lacy panties, garter belt with sheer nylon stockings, and high heels that she hadn't shown any signs of taking off before coaxing Steve down onto the bed with her. He'd been keeping a couple of inches worth of distance between them as they kissed, letting her take the lead — this little interlude had been her and Tony's proposition. after all. 

And she didn't seem inclined to take things too fast, twenty-first century wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am sexual mores notwithstanding. No, she'd been quite slow and gentle thus far, only undoing the top button of his cotton shirt while they kissed with closed mouths, respecting the ways he was comfortable touching her — a hand on her shoulder, or curved around her cheek, or laid lightly to her waist after barely brushing the side of one rounded breast — and frankly he was grateful, because he found her gorgeous near-nakedness just a tad overwhelming. Her husband was the impatient one: Steve could practically feel the eagerness radiating off him from where he sat about seven feet away, tapping one sneakered foot on the carpet until he just hadn't been able to hold it in any longer. 

"Tony," Kitt admonished, her voice softly musical in spite of the Boston accent, just before effectively distracting Steve with another kiss — the nip of small sharp teeth on his lower lip, a series of small soothing licks — that was just, _wow_ , Steve had serious doubts that a tongue of flesh and blood could do things like _that_. "He hasn't even taken off my panties yet." 

Steve could hear the smirk in Tony's voice: "Which just proves he's not the tactical genius he thinks he is. I mean, c'mon — one glide and twist of those super-soldier fingers of his and those panties would be history, not to mention what he could already be doing to you _through_ them." 

"Ignore him," Kitt murmured, running the fingers of her left hand through Steve's hair to cup the back of his skull before kissing him again, this time with more fondness than burn, "and feel free to set your own pace. He's always wanted to be a Hollywood producer." 

"Or a porno director," Tony countered cheerfully. "Because let me tell you, the visuals here are already pretty inspiring." Out of the corner of his right eye, Steve could see him holding up both hands as if framing a movie shot of the two of them on the mattress. "Oh yeah — I could totally work with this. You don't mind if JARVIS takes some video, do you?" 

Okay, now Steve was certain that there wasn't a square inch of him that wasn't turning bright red — including his dick, which had been rock-hard for the past few minutes in spite of Tony's avid gaze. "You're kidding me." 

"I've never been more serious in my life," Tony said, and he sounded like he meant it. "Trust me, Cap, you'll want to review this later, because once Kitt really gets to work on you you'll have a hard time seeing straight." 

The Jade android was still smiling at him, its graceful hands caressing his hair and face, neck and shoulders, without haste. "He's right, you know," she assured him earnestly, "and JARVIS will store the footage on Tony's private server, which has the highest encryption levels of anything in the Tower. Besides," and the quirk of her full lips turned sly, "it will prove invaluable for debriefing. Surely you want to be able to improve your future performance?" 

"Um." The thought of watching himself…. doing that… to Kitt's android body…. and being _critiqued_ … made his mouth go abruptly dry with unexpected lust. He managed to swallow enough to get some saliva flowing again. "Is that — I mean — it's just… it's pretty straightforward, right?" 

Kitt purred and subtly writhed against him as her thighs parted, angling and raising her left leg to wrap it around the back of his right, arching her spine in a way that pressed her full breasts against his chest and stole the spit from his tongue all over again. So much for 'slow and gentle' — Kitt had just taken the wheel and gone from zero to sixty in one second flat, and somehow Steve couldn't find it in his heart to seriously complain. 

"Not the way _I_ do it," she promised as the fingertips of her right hand teased the nape of Steve's neck, then began to run down his spine — and suddenly he had to clench his ass hard to resist the urge to start humping between her opened thighs, because he was pretty sure that would be rude. "Rest assured that I'm looking forward to finding out just how limber you really are — maybe not tonight, since this will be your first time and I don't want to distract you with unnecessary complexities —" Her hand dipped into the small of his back and opened against his left buttock, rubbing and pulling him with effortless familiarity, and his breath caught in his throat as his body recognized the command and ground forward against her, the pressure between cock and pubic mound absolutely heavenly even through his clothes. "But in days and nights to come I'll show you some tricks that will absolutely astound you — you have my word." 

"She's got a library of sexual techniques in that pretty gold-titanium skull of hers that would put a whole school of Tantric sex masters to shame," Tony chimed in. "Just try not to break his brain too badly, huh, Kitten?" 

"I _was_ in the Army, you know," Steve snapped back — well, as best he could with all his blood rushing south and Kitt biting her lower lip and arching beneath him and grinding back, gazing up at him with eyes both pleased and predatory. He knew he should be pulling away, getting some decorous distance between their bodies again, but —  

"And came out of it a virgin," Tony countered. "And don't tell me nobody ever tried to sully your driven snow: I've seen the way women look at you, like you're the world's biggest piece of cheesecake on a silver platter." 

— but it felt like they were joined at the hips magnetically, like Steve's body had just been waiting for shameless physical contact to fully assert its own needs. Besides, no woman — not even any of the USO chorus girls he'd encountered, some of whom had been as bold as brass — had ever tried to map the contours of his dick with her pussy the way Kitt was at this moment, and knowing that it was appalling behaviour didn't prevent Steve from liking it, immensely.  

Something red and borderline savage began to stir in his core. This time he was the one who kissed Kitt, barely resisting the impulse to thrust his tongue into her mouth. She leaned up to meet him, humming with pleasure as she parted her lips, her hips still moving silkily, and then her tongue was slipping into _his_ mouth, the tiniest lick, and he remembered Tony's directive of three nights previous: _The Jade unit's tough, Cap — as tough as Silver, which is nearly as tough as Obsidian, and as strong as you are on your best day. A little slap and tickle, no matter how rough, isn't even going to scuff the finish._  

"Yeah," Tony breathed as Steve locked his right hand around Kitt's left bicep and bore down, using his full weight to pin her to the mattress and crush those magnificent breasts against his chest, "oh _yeah_ , that's it," as he kissed her hard, almost as hard as he wanted to, and she moaned into his mouth and then whimpered when he ground his hard-on between her parted thighs with new force, "that's the ticket, Captain — give her _everything_ she wants…" 

When he pulled back he found that he was almost panting, and that Kitt was gazing up at him with a smile full of sleek satisfaction. He looked her over keenly, or at least what he could see of her while they were pressed length to length from the chest down. "You're —?" 

"Perfectly fine." The smile turned challenging. "You can't bruise me, Steve, or break my bones, or make me bleed. All you can do is exactly what Tony just said: give me what I want, because _this_ ," and she flirted her hips in a way that sent a sweet shock of pressure through his entire body, "feels like _exactly_ what I need right now." 

And yes, he wanted to fuck her, God, did he ever!— but that wasn't all that he wanted. He had no desire to brutalize her, even if she could physically take it: he wanted to be careful, and gentle, and considerate, to treat her as she deserved to be treated. He wanted to be good for her, even though the sum total of his experience lay in a few shy kisses almost sixty years ago and some videos off the Internet.  

So he looked into her beautiful face with its brilliant green eyes and tried not to blush, although he suspected he'd failed miserably. "I — I'm not sure what to do," he confessed, and as big and as strong and as agile as he was, he felt both deeply humble in his ignorance and profoundly self-conscious in his clumsiness. "I mean, I've never —" 

This time Kitt's smile was kind, her hands gentle as they traced the curve of his ass, reassuring even as they inflamed. "Do you trust me, Steve?" 

Steve thought of the past four years, of all the times when KITT had functioned as Obsidian in battle, guarding Steve's back and fighting side by side with him, a model of intelligence and efficiency — and of endless heart. "With my life," he responded with absolute honesty. 

"Then trust her now, buddy," Tony chuckled from the shadows as he sat back and crossed his legs, "because she's going to teach you everything you need to know. JARVIS: start recording." 

" _Very good, sir,_ " JARVIS intoned from all around them, and Steve closed his eyes and leaned in again, willfully losing himself in the artistry of the machine Tony had crafted to embody the spirit he so desperately loved, a creature neither male nor female — but undeniably perfect in any of its various incarnations. 


	2. Chapter 2

Steve had known he was in trouble almost a month ago, the first time he'd heard KITT's voice — or a sweetly feminine variation of it, anyway — coming out of the drop-dead gorgeous woman on Tony's arm, the one with the endless gams and heavenly curves and truly magnificent cleavage, all wrapped up in a little black dress that clung in all the right places. The twenty-first century sometimes felt like one long string of shocks even after almost five years of living in it, but this one ( _My God, he's a_ ** _woman_** _, when the — how the —_ ** _why?_** ) had hit him even further below the belt because it came from someone he knew and trusted: someone he'd come to view as a highly competent and dedicated male soldier in his unit, and definitely not as a person capable of lighting up his entire body like a Christmas tree with the power of his (her?) smile. 

But there she'd (he'd) been, and as forcefully as Steve's brain had tried to reject the knowledge of who he was staring at… well, that voice was unmistakeable. KITT used a distinctive combination of accent and emotional inflection, and Steve had trained himself both to recognize it in battle from as little data as the vocalization of a single syllable, and to read KITT's attitude instantaneously. Right now its intent was clearly seductive, and while the sexual undercurrent wasn't new either Steve was used to seeing it directed at Tony from a male body. Feeling it directed at _him_ , from such a slinky set of female physical attributes… 

Steve's first coherent thought in the confusion had been: _I want to draw her._ His second impulse, nearly simultaneous and much deeper, was: _I want to make love to her._ And as hard as his mind recoiled from that perverse urge, keenly aware of the all bounds of personal and military propriety that he'd just crossed in his heart (a soldier in his unit _and Tony's husband!_ ), it remained firmly rooted in his flesh because her _scent_ — he'd never smelled anything like that from flesh and blood, warm faint perfume and something else artificial that set fire to his blood. _Pheromones?_ He'd drawn a slightly deeper breath and yes, it definitely reminded him of the Nortian method of biochemical attack, although it was far more subtle and far less brutal: coaxing rather than compelling. A robot with pheromones? No wonder Tony looked like he didn't know what had hit him.  

Not that Steve could claim tactical superiority in that respect. He barely managed to get through an eleven sentence conversation without tripping all over his own tongue, and as Kitt walked away, regal as a queen with Tony Stark obviously wrapped around her elegant little finger, Steve had found himself staring after them with his mouth open and his dick at almost full attention in his boxers — and his head spinning hard enough to be heard in Brooklyn, because _KITT as a woman!_ That was absolutely _nuts!_  

The question that surfaced next had been: _This isn't permanent, is it?_ He'd prayed to God not, because he counted himself damned lucky that all the male members of his Team were able to work so well with Natasha, who was sexy in ways that made men fall to their knees and beg on a semi-regular basis. Two women in the mix might critically destabilize the Team's dynamics, even if the newcomer wasn't technically a woman at all. 

He'd made his way back up to his suite, changed into his workout clothes, and gone down to the gym to pound the punching bags until his body stopped aching in all the wrong ways. 

********************************************* 

She kept coming out of his pencil when he least expected it: the graceful curve of her shoulders and throat, the strong angle of her cheekbones, the mane of her blacker-than-night hair. She was so beautifully graphic that it only made sense, really: after all, he'd spent the first few weeks after the Team had started cohabitating at Stark Tower sketching all of them in various poses, and both Obsidian and Silver had more than a few pages in his sketchbooks (say what you will about Tony, he knew the elements of good design).  

This, however was KITT"s design — Tony hadn't been able to stop bragging about that, and about how this engineering marvel had been created especially for him as an anniversary present. A present he couldn't just admire, but could kiss and caress and take to his bed whenever he felt like it — and judging from the way KITT looked at him with those green eyes, she couldn't possibly be happier with that arrangement. 

It took Steve a couple of weeks to stop feeling vaguely guilty when Jade appeared on the page beneath his hand, because he couldn't shake the feeling that he was touching something that wasn't his. And even after the guilt faded he still found the quality of her paper smile more than a little disquieting. 

********************************************* 

"That depends on what you mean by 'permanent'," Tony said, and sipped from his glass of amber alcohol while regarding Steve with clear amusement over the rim. 

Steve met his gaze squarely, refusing to be deflected. They were sitting on one of the smaller side couches in the common room, where Steve had invited Tony to join him while the rest of the team sat on the largest couch watching Clint play _Dance Dance Revolution_ — which was convenient, because the combined sound of Thor, Natasha, and even Bruce cheering and yelling advice provided good cover for this conversation. "I mean, has the Silver android been retired?" 

Tony rolled his eyes. "Steve, you just saw him last week." 

"For all of fifteen minutes," Steve persisted. He deliberately did not glance toward KITT, who was sitting beside Natasha with her (his?) legs neatly crossed at the knee, clad in an A-line burgundy dress with black trim and laughing along with the rest of them at Clint's antics. "If the Team needs to scramble at a second's notice and KITT doesn't have time to change bodies, I need to know what I've got." 

"You've got a Stark android," Tony countered, looking a little bored, "that can tear cars to pieces with its bare hands and bring a helicopter down with one blast of its hand-mounted repulsors, same as Silver." Another sip, surveying the gang on the couch, while Steve's locked gaze never wavered. A shrug and a sigh. "KITT's been wearing the Jade unit for the past week and a half because he wants to — it takes a while to fully break in a new body, even for him. He plans to revert to Silver for most functions this coming Saturday." His expression, which had been warm and lazy, abruptly turned keener, and he refocussed his attention from the couch to Steve. "Why? Is it bothering you?" 

"No," Steve asserted at once, and hoped to God that the burn he felt in his cheeks wasn't actually making it to the surface. "It's just that —"

Judging by the sudden delighted gleam in Tony's eyes, that was a vain hope. "Steve, you _dog!_ " he crowed — quietly, for a change — and glanced slyly sidelong at Jade. "God dammit, I knew you had a sense of taste locked up somewhere inside that good-boy facade of yours! You'd be just as happy if he stayed this way forever, wouldn't you?" 

Now he _knew_ he was blushing, and silently cursing Tony's sometimes uncanny perceptiveness. "Actually, no, I wouldn't." 

"Why? Because she makes Little Steve stand up and salute in your pants?" 

Steve had to glance away, and shove down memories of a couple of times, late at night, when he'd — "Is everything about sex for you?" he demanded. 

Tony shrugged again, but happily. "Only the most important things." His tone of voice, which had been gleeful, turned — compassionate as well as amused? "Cap… I'm not offended, believe me. I _like_ having other men look at him and get so turned on they can't see straight." 

Steve, still looking at the floor, shook his head. It was impossible. "That's —" 

"How I'm wired," Tony said matter-of-factly. "It gets me off, when other people want what's mine." A pause that Steve, as skilled as he was at Team dynamics, couldn't readily interpret. "And I _really_ get off on other people touching what's mine, with my permission." 

Steve's brain lost all traction and stalled out. He stared at the carpet between his feet without seeing it. "… What?" 

Tony's hand appeared in his field of vision to pat his knee companionably. "He really likes you, Stevie-boy. Think about it," the engineer said quietly, and got up to head across to the bar, leaving Steve in a breathless state of freefall. 

********************************************* 

That night he'd lain in his king-sized bed and stared at the ceiling, his whole body full of shameful furtive heat. It burned in his cheeks, in his fingertips — and in much more problematical parts. 

 _Tony just implied that he'd let me —_  

 _And that KITT would —_  

 _"He really likes you, Stevie-boy."_  

 _"I_ ** _really_** _get off on other people touching what's mine, with my permission."_  

Steve had grown up in the first half of the twentieth century, not under a rock. He knew that people slept around, even when they were married. He also knew that it was wrong — one of the worst things a person could do, a horribly hurtful betrayal of one's wedding vows and one's contract with God. 

But Tony and KITT hadn't made those kind of promises to each other. They had sworn to love each other unto death, to protect each other, to die for each other if necessary — but never to be sexually faithful. 

And Steve, as part of the wedding party, had never felt any lack in that omission because the power of their love was so clear and pure and strong. They were, all strangeness notwithstanding, quite possibly the most married couple he'd ever known. 

And he knew that Tony had slept around a few times since. 

And that KITT, as far as anybody could tell, didn't mind in the least. 

And that they'd slept with a pair of girls in Spain on their honeymoon, so Tony obviously didn't mind KITT playing by the same rules. Even if KITT, as far as Steve knew, had done nothing else since. 

" _He really likes you, Stevie-boy."_  

 _Tony just implied that he'd let me —_  

He thought of Jade's lush curves and honeyed skin, the flash of her smile and the smoulder of her green eyes, and let his hand creep down inside the waistband of his flannel pajama bottoms. He was so hard he was dripping, and the shock of pleasure when he ran his thumb over the slick tip was nothing short of heavenly. 

Those lips. Those eyes. That _presence_ , quick-witted and decisive and sharp as a cold glass of fresh lemonade.

It was the pheromones. It had to be.

But there were no pheromones now. 

Steve held his breath and began to stroke his traitorous flesh. He could safely allow himself that much… couldn't he? 


	3. Chapter 3

There was an old adage, current even in Steve's time, about washing your car to make it rain, and that weird "build it and they will come" law seemed to be working double time when it came to the Avengers. Before the Loki/Chitauri incident had thrown the Team together you'd have been hard pressed to find a single reported episode of alien or trans-dimensional incursion on the planet (or at least one that any of the major news services covered), but since 2012? It felt like the Earth suffered one every goddamned week. 

That wasn't the reality, of course: the Avengers had only faced seventeen such situations, and had managed to beat the invaders back every single time. Sometimes they came out of it with broken bodies or battered minds (the Nortian pheromonal and D'her'vi telepathic attacks had been particularly brutal), but they'd pulled each others' asses out of the fire on the battlefield and united to support each other in whatever the aftermath turned out to be. Usually Steve was the strong shoulder that everybody else leaned on, but after surviving the D'her'vi (and the way they'd dredged up the full horror of the War years, with particular emphasis on Bucky's senseless death) he'd found himself surrounded and borne up in his grief by his soldiers… his charges… his friends. Every one of them had been struggling under their own burdens of painful memory, but they'd done their level best to give Steve everything he needed, and more. 

He would never forget the moment the tears had finally broken free, two days after the battle and in front of his Team — and how ashamed and appalled he'd been at his terrible weakness — and how his deeper fear that it was unforgivable had been washed away when Natasha (she had keened about orphans and blood) had led him to the couch and put her arms around him to let him lean against her, and Thor (alone, lost, banished forevermore) had cupped the back of his neck with silent strength, and Tony (the shards, the knives, the water) had sat down beside him and put one hand on his forearm and just listened while he sobbed out the poison of the images that wouldn't stop playing behind his eyes. Kitt Silver, who as Obsidian had screamed about acid and begged to be saved from the pit, had fetched a warm blanket and wrapped it around Steve's shaking body with caring efficiency, then sat down on Tony's other side and taken his husband-to-be's free hand, joining him and supporting him in the vigil.  

Surrounded by the loving acceptance of his fellow warriors, Steve had cried himself to sleep — and awakened the following morning feeling tempered, like steel in the forge. They'd never spoken of it since, but he knew they all remembered, and that it had been a moment that had strengthened the Team's bonds to invulnerable intensity. They'd been cracked open individually but they hadn't broken, because the others had been there. The whole had turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts. 

So — Earth's mightiest heroes, facing Earth's greatest threats together. This time it was happening in a public square in downtown Istanbul because some fool magic user had succeeded in opening a portal to some unnamed infernal dimension, and Steve was up to his armpits in… well, he might as well call them 'imps' and be done with it. They were small, red-hot, insanely fast, sickeningly agile — but fortunately, really easy to kill if you managed to hit them. 

Steve, being Captain America, was managing to hit them a lot in spite of the low light levels: the sun had been reduced to a dull red circle by roiling crimson clouds, and the ambient temperature had risen by at least ten degrees since the portal had torn its way through the pavement at the far end of the square. There were corpses, but none of them were his own people, and for the moment that was all Steve could afford to focus on. 

To Steve's left, on a broken section of wall overhead, Clint knelt and calmly fired arrow after arrow into the hordes pouring out of the portal, shattering non-human bodies into patterns of stinking splatter with explosive arrowheads. To Steve's right, Natasha's guns fired incessantly with only the briefest pauses for reloading: she was managing to keep the little monsters off her position, but just barely. They were all protecting Sharra Lalia, the magic user who was rapidly paging her way through the leather-bound grimoire of the man responsible for this fiasco (who was currently gibbering and gnawing on his own fingers at the base of a shattered tree) in search of a way to close the portal. Steve hoped to Hell that the way she was chanting under her breath meant that she was on the right track, because the flood of demonic troops wasn't showing any sign of slowing down after a full thirty seconds. 

"Tony! KITT!" He snapped the words between twists and strikes, unable to spare a glance upward. "Report!" 

"They're fast," Tony growled through the comm link over the sound of staccato repulsor fire, "and they're tough little sons of bitches, and they seem to think that — _ow, no no no,_ ** _down_** _boy!_ — that we make tasty targets." 

" _I don't mind being chewed on,_ " KITT interjected with his sharp male voice, " _if it keeps some of them distracted from the civilian population._ " 

"No argument there, honey-buns." An irritated grunt, presumably as powerful jaws clamped down on one of his armoured limbs, followed by more energy blasts. "The Hulk's ripping them to pieces along the parkway and Thor's frying them before they hit the mosque — I'm seeing casualties in the street, JARVIS?" 

" _Seventy-three, sir, including twenty-four children._ " 

Another grunt, followed by a near-scream: "Oh, _fuck me!_ " 

Steve couldn't spare a second to react, but KITT spoke up instantly: " ** _Tony!_** " 

"I'm okay," a pained gasp, "I'm okay, bastard just tried to take a chunk out of my lower back." 

" _Sir, I'm detecting an armour breach and significant damage to your thoracolumbar fascia and latissimus dorsi —_ " 

"Save it, J, I can feel what's going on. _Fuck,_ that's annoying — tell me you're close to bolting the barn door, Cap!" 

"We're working on it." He sliced the heads off three imps with one blow of the edge of his shield, then pivoted to punch through the chest of one of the more elaborately dressed leader units. "Just keep them occupied and hold the perimeter." 

" _We're on top of it,_ " KITT said crisply, " _as long as their rate of incursion doesn't —_ ** _what the unholy Hell is that?_** " 

Steve could already hear that something was wrong — well, more wrong than the disastrous course of events thus far — because under the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard chitter of the ground forces and the hissing howls of the pterodactyl-like air troops a new sound was rising, like the deep-throated ringing of a vast and diabolical bell. He was facing Natasha rather than the portal, so her _Oh_ ** _fuck_** _me_ expression and savage curse in Russian were his second indicator that their fortunes had just taken a turn for the worse. 

"What've we got?" he demanded, slamming aside a leader unit that was bounding toward Natasha's throat, venomous claws unsheathed.  

He could hear the humourless grin in Tony's voice: "How's a big-ass dog-snake from the seventh circle of Hades strike your fancy? Thirty-five meters long and — Jesus, that's anti-proton — KITT, put a muzzle on it, fast!" 

For something that possessed no lips, KITT had a nasty snarl on him. " _Take_ ** _that_** _, you overgrown refugee from a —_ ** _ahhh!_** " 

"Fuck!" Tony swore again, desperately: "Hang on baby, I'm —" 

" _I've got it_." He didn't have lungs either, so he didn't gasp, but his voice was edged with pain. " _I've got it — hold still, you —_ ** _got you!_** " It was a cry of sheer triumph, and the belling sound became an unearthly shriek that shattered glass up and down the square even as more poisonous resonant tolling filled the air. " _Target is down, but it looks like it brought some of its friends._ " 

"it's the Chitauri battle beasts all over again," Tony panted. "Three — no, four bogeys — and KITT just lost his left arm. Any time now, Cap…" 

Something wrapped around Steve's heart, unexpected, and tightened like barb wire. He won a half-second's pause and spun back toward Sharra Lalia's magic circle, where blue light was glowing in every sigil and an ethereal wind was lifting her wild pale mane of hair off her red-robed shoulders. She raised both hands — the grimoire remained suspended in the air in front of her, its pages shivering and spitting white sparks — and spoke four words that seemed to twist themselves inside-out in Steve's brain, and just like that it was over: the imps on the ground and in the sky dissolving into clouds of foul-smelling dust, the rising dog-snakes writhing back through the dimensional rift not quite fast enough, leaving a scattering of huge ragged spines and the tip of one flabby muzzle behind. 

Steve barely had time to assure himself that Natasha and Clint were uninjured before Tony and KITT descended from the rapidly clearing sky. KITT executed an extremely rocky landing, minus his left arm and coated in big clots of what looked like rapidly solidifying snot, if snot was fluorescent green and stank like essence of rotting skunk carcasses. It stuck like glue and as it dried it gummed up both his weapons ports and his repulsors, so that within less than a minute he was utterly incapable of energy fire, projectile launch, or flight.  

Which meant he had to ride back to the USA in the quinjet ("No fucking way," Tony declared, "am I leaving this kind of StarkTech lying around where anybody could grab it!") along with Steve, Thor, Clint, Natasha, an exhausted Bruce — and their thoroughly outraged noses. By the time they touched down atop Stark Tower everybody was deeply unhappy, especially KITT: although Obsidian's sensors didn't detect smells the way human noses did, he was well aware that he reeked and there was nothing whatsoever wrong with his sense of dignity.  

He stalked out of the jet with a stiff-legged stride and his head held high, leaving the rest of the Team to take their first deep breath in nearly half an hour. Tony met him at the base of the ramp, his face dead pale within the frame of his helmet. KITT wrapped his remaining arm around his husband's waist ("What the hell _is_ it with your left arm, anyway?" " _Hush, you…_ ") and they helped each other into the Tower, clearly taking mutual comfort in the contact. 

Steve followed, supporting Bruce and trying his level best not to think about the civilians who had died in Turkey today because the Avengers hadn't quite been able to contain the threat a lunatic had unleashed. About a year into the Initiative, the man currently stumbling at his side had said: _That's your great strength, you know — that you care. It's what makes you the kind of leader even this crazy combination of opposing forces will follow._ He suspected — he hoped — that the truth lay somewhere in that range, but it didn't help much in the hours after a battle when the ache of every death weighed silently but palpably on his heart. 

He anticipated spending the night staring at his sketchbook, trying to run away from the burden of lingering responsibility. He had no idea that Tony and KITT were about to offer him something completely different — and utterly distracting — to think about instead. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to teljhin for a particularly fine line of dialogue (used during the proposition) that she suggested during a chat session and which I've shamelessly stolen. :)

" _Captain Rogers?_ " 

Steve looked up from his largest sketchbook, where he'd been putting the finishing touches on an elaborately detailed coloured pencil drawing of one of the imp leaders from Istanbul. His suite in Stark Tower was dramatically lit with the last glories of the setting sun, although he himself sat in a sheltered corner under a pool of strong steady radiance from the lamp on his work desk. "Yes, JARVIS?" 

" _I'm sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Stark and KITT have requested that you join them in their penthouse at your earliest convenience._ " 

He blinked, not bothering to conceal his surprise: he'd come to trust JARVIS that much. "Did they say why they wanted to see me?" 

" _I'm afraid not, Captain. Shall I pass along that query?_ " 

"No, I —" After the significant hit to his back Tony had taken earlier, Steve would have thought he'd have nothing more challenging in mind for this evening than a hot bath, some painkillers, and a perfectly chaste bed, but this _was_ Tony they were talking about. "Never mind. Tell them I'll be there in ten minutes, if that's all right." 

A brief pause, no doubt while JARVIS checked. " _That would be perfectly satisfactory. They look forward to seeing you shortly._ " 

"Thanks," Steve said, and closed up his sketchbook. While slotting the Prismacolors back into their proper places in their carrying case he briefly considered exactly why Tony might want to see him: the engineer had disappeared into his main lab immediately upon their arrival back at the Tower and hadn't been seen by anybody since — except KITT, of course, and Steve knew them as a couple well enough to picture the back-and-forth that would have followed, with KITT insisting that Tony get his back seen to and Tony equally insistent that Obsidian's arm had to take priority. KITT, being considerably stronger as the Silver android and certainly not afraid to pick Tony up and carry him when he felt it was for his husband's own good, had probably won that particular domestic battle… which meant that Tony should have been in bed hours ago. So what was he doing up and (presumably) around at — Steve glanced at Traser Bucker Automatic UTC watch that Tony had given him as a stocking stuffer last Christmas — a little after eight p.m.? 

"JARVIS," he inquired as he put away the drawing materials in their leather carry bag, "is Tony — well, is he all right?" 

" _Mr. Stark is as well as can be expected given the condition of his back,_ " JARVIS replied, and Steve had lived in the Tower long enough to hear the faint tartness under the A.I.'s calm tones. So, Tony was doing something that JARVIS didn't entirely approve of, which meant he probably wasn't horizontal. " _However, I would advise you not to count on his presence should an emergency arise._ " 

Steve closed up the bag and headed for the bathroom to wash his hands. "I'll keep that in mind," he assured the computer, who could be almost as protective of Tony as KITT himself — which was why Steve knew better than to press for more details. JARVIS was many things around here, but above all he was the supreme gatekeeper of Tony Stark's secrets, both great and small.  

********************************************* 

By the time Steve stepped off the elevator into Tony and KITT's penthouse the sunset had faded to a muted glow in the west and tatters of golden clouds strewn in the dark sky over the jewelled tapestry of New York City. It made for a spectacular view through the floor-to-ceiling windows of what Steve had come to think of as Tony's "reading room": the third floor of the penthouse level, which had an open floor plan, shelves of real paper-and-leather books along the walls, and small groups of chairs and couches suitable for lounging and conversing. Tonight the room had only two occupants when Steve entered: Tony, seated close to the windows in a long low futuristic chair that distributed his weight evenly from shoulders to calves, and KITT-as-Jade, who was in the process of bringing her husband a dark drink in a tall glass. 

It had taken Steve a while to get the hang of the tangle of definitions surrounding Tony's artificially intelligent counterpart, but once he'd figured it out it all made sense in a convoluted way. KITT, also known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, was the core intelligence that inhabited all associated physical bodies: the Knight 2000 automobile, the Obsidian battle android, and the Silver android that could pass as a human male. He was referred to as KITT while in the car and Obsidian, but as Kitt while in the LMD, and he was very particular about the correct forms of address being used in official correspondence.  

And he was definitely male, in spite of having no permanent sexual equipment. Even knowing that KITT wasn't human by any stretch of the imagination, it had never occurred to Steve to refer to him as 'it' — and that was a measure of the strength of KITT's personality, which had a way of impressing people forcefully within seconds of meeting him for the first time. He was, in fact, one of the most charismatic individuals Steve had ever encountered, although it wasn't until after his bold act of self-sacrifice against the Dragon that Steve had finally come around to considering him as a fully fledged person rather than as a cunning tool designed by Tony Stark. Since then he'd come to view KITT not only as a fellow Avenger but also as a valued friend, someone who could be counted on to express his honest (and informed) opinion on any subject and not to pull any punches.  

And as male. Definitely male. Which was why it still felt like a punch in the gut to see KITT wearing the Jade android, which was currently clad in a fitted black blazer tightly buttoned over a scarlet silk shirt, a black pencil skirt, charcoal pantyhose and low but stylish heels. She (because in this form KITT preferred to be addressed as female) glanced up and flashed a smile at Steve as he approached: "Ah, there you are! Thank you for coming so quickly. I hope we didn't call too late…?" 

"Not at all," Steve affirmed, and nodded to Tony, who nodded back in a way that suggested neck muscles already stiffening up. The billionaire wasn't only awake and semi-upright: he was gorgeously attired in black pants, neat ebony slipper-shoes, and a thick rich dressing gown in shades of black and burgundy with gold and rose-petal pink accents. It wasn't a colour combination that Steve would have imagined looking good on any man, but Tony, with his usually effortless self-confidence, managed to pull it off perfectly. "I'd have thought you'd be in bed by now." 

Tony shrugged, and the way he promptly winced demonstrated what a bad idea that had been. "Yeah, well… I had a lot to think about. Couldn't sleep. Sweetheart, get the Captain something to drink, would you? I feel like I'm glued to this chair." 

"That's because you _are_ glued to that chair," Kitt retorted, her green eyes dancing with amusement. Tony confined his reaction to a snort and a fond glance upward, his gaze momentarily arrested by her cleavage — which, Steve had to admit, was well worth the stopover.

"Ginger ale, please," Steve requested when Kitt raised an eyebrow at him, and turned his attention to Tony again as she crossed to the standing bar. "What's the word on your back?" 

Tony grimaced and squirmed — very slightly, even that tiny moment clearly uncomfortable. "Doctor J says my left latissimus dorsi muscle is torn in three places and the thoracolumbar fascia isn't looking so hot either. He says I'll be off active duty for at least a week —" 

" _Actually, sir, I believe I advised eight to ten days minimum._ " 

Tony blew a sarcastic kiss at the ceiling, but his smirk was genuinely affectionate. "Love you too, sweetie, but we all know what a worrywart you are." He flashed a thin smile in Steve's direction. "Anyway, he's already given me one ultrasound treatment and if the rest of them work just as well I should be back on my feet in no time." There was a more conventional chair — upright, with arms — facing him, and he gestured Steve toward it with his free hand. "Have a seat, Cap." 

Steve complied. Kitt, over the tiny clinkings of ice going into a glass, remarked: "You'll stay off your feet for as long as JARVIS recommends — and a couple of days longer, just to be on the safe side." 

Tony outright whined: "Kiiiiitt —" 

"Don't make me sit on you," Kitt threatened as she poured the soft drink. "Because I will."

"Oh baby," Tony growled, "that's it, talk dirty some more!" 

Steve had gotten used to Tony's irrepressible lewdness — after four years of dealing with it, he hadn't had much choice — but the thought of Jade on top of Tony in their bed, straddling Tony's lap, maybe grinding down just a bit… he looked out the windows and coughed nervously, hoping that he wasn't actually blushing. Tony's chuckle informed him otherwise.  

"Sorry," and Steve could hear the smirk in his voice. "Sometimes I just can't help myself." Falling to a conspiratorial murmur: "I mean, _look_ at her." 

"Uh —" He wanted to. Which was a real problem, because the images Tony had put in his head weren't stopping: he could see Jade leaning over, kissing Tony under the smooth fall of her long black hair while her cleavage swelled against the confines of her shirt, leaning closer to breathe words into his ear, all the things she wanted him to do to her — 

And here she was, standing over Steve with her artificial skin's perfume clear to his enhanced senses, her shining hair unbound over her shoulders, offering him his ginger ale with another sharp quirk of one eyebrow. He accepted it with a mumbled thanks, aware of the burn in his cheeks and the glance Tony and Kitt were exchanging over his head, and took a quick swallow from his glass to cover his confusion. 

Tony, mercifully, seemed inclined to divert the conversation to other topics. "So what were the final numbers?" he queried into his own drink, even though JARVIS was doubtless on top of the statistics from Istanbul right down to the last shattered brick. 

Steve leaped at that chance to talk about something else, even if the topic was a painful one. He looked Tony right in the eyes. "One hundred and thirteen dead, four hundred and sixty-two injured." 

Tony whistled softly. " _Damn._ " 

"We did everything we could," Steve stated, grateful too for the chance to switch to 'comforting commander' mode. It was a role he knew well and was comfortable assuming. Kitt crossed to stand behind and to the right of Tony's chair, reaching down to rest her left hand gently on his right shoulder while Steve continued: "The death toll would have been a helluva lot worse if we hadn't held that perimeter. As it is, they didn't lose the whole city — just one small section of it, and we even managed to save the mosque." 

Tony reached up and across his chest to lay his left hand over Kitt's, interlacing their fingers — but he still looked pensive. "Any idea why yet?" 

Steve shrugged. "The usual — a power-mad bully who didn't give a damn how many people he hurt, if it meant he could be on top of the heap for a few hours." 

"And instead he lost everything," Tony mused, "including his mind." Steve nodded. Tony sighed from the gut, sending a slight smile and a glance upward when Kitt squeezed his fingers. "Well — we're still here, right? More or less in one piece." 

Steve nodded and tossed back another mouthful of ginger ale. He knew Tony's conversational rhythms now too, and sensed that Tony was actually getting to the point of this whole set-up. 

"That was a real bitch-kitty of a mission," Tony continued, "and we're all feeling a lot less than happy about it, so I thought maybe we could arrange a little play date." His dark eyes held Steve's gaze without wavering. "You and Kitt, that is — maybe me too, but that's not necessarily a given. I'm in too much pain right now to do much more than cheerlead from the sidelines, but —" 

Steve knew he was staring. He couldn't help it, because his brain had just gone into total freefall for the second time in less than two weeks. _He really likes you, Stevie-boy. Think about it._ "Wait," he interrupted, because it was vitally important that he be absolutely clear on this point, "what are you saying? Are you actually suggesting that you — and me — that _we'd_ —?" And that was as far as he could go before the words choked in his throat like cars in a freeway pile-up. 

Kitt's sculpted eyebrow elevated even more as she glanced down at Tony. "I thought you'd talked to him about the possibility." 

"I did!" Tony insisted, just a touch plaintively. 

Kitt's gaze shifted to Steve, and her smile was both wry and kind. "He doesn't look like somebody who was prepared for the conversation to take this particular turn." 

Tony was looking at him too, exasperated and — yes, affectionate, as he interlocked his fingers more tightly with his husband/wife's. "Here's the deal, Steve — we like you and we trust you, and we're inviting you to have a good time with us. We want to share something awesome with you, if that's something you'd be interested in — which I think it is, because only a blind man could miss the way you've been looking at KITT while he's wearing the Jade unit. It can be just you and her, although I'd really _really_ like to sit in on the action because I get a serious kick out of seeing my baby enjoy herself." His gaze ran down Steve's torso to his groin with nearly palpable force, and he smirked again. "And something tells me you have what it takes to show her a seriously good time." 

Steve couldn't even blink. It was the first time he'd seen Tony and KITT kiss all over again. "I, uh… that probably wouldn't be a good idea. I mean, I'm —" His cheeks felt like they were going to spontaneously combust, but he forged ahead anyway. "I could damage the unit. You wouldn't want that, would you?" 

Tony's chuckle was sardonic. "The Jade unit's tough, Cap — as tough as Silver, which is nearly as tough as Obsidian, and as strong as you are on your best day. A little slap and tickle, no matter how rough, isn't even going to scuff the finish, so that issue isn't even on the table." 

Kitt's tone was gently authoritative, her expression appealing: "What matters is what _you_ want, Steve. We've made it clear that we'd be more than willing to welcome you into our bed. The only question is: are you willing to join us there?"

Steve was fairly sure that the room was slowly spinning around them. "You're asking me to have a three-way with you." 

"Or a two-way," Tony clarified, "if you —" 

"You're married," Steve stated. "Even if it was just me and Kitt, that wouldn't change the fact that you're a couple. Whatever happens, you'd always be there." After a moment Tony conceded the point with a nod, and Steve continued: "So this is a three-way, right?" 

"According to that definition," Kitt agreed, "yes, it is." 

Steve looked her right in the eyes. "And you have no problem with that." 

Kitt looked down at Tony, and he gazed up at her, with such depth of love that Steve's flayed-open heart began to beat a little faster. "The devotion we share isn't threatened by indulging in sexual pleasure with other people. And you…" She glanced up at Steve again and smiled with her trademark quality of bittersweet intensity. "You've proven yourself a true friend to us both, and you'll be the first person other than Tony that I've truly desired to be physically intimate with." 

"Truly desired?" His heart leaped and sank simultaneously. "There've been others?" 

Tony snorted softly. "Kitt doesn't count the two girls we entertained one night in Milan, because he was only experimenting on my recommendation. He enjoyed himself, but there was no personal connection there."  

"Not the way there'd be with you," Kitt confirmed. "But this discussion is pointless if you're not interested in the first place." 

Steve studied them both as carefully as if he were about to draw their dual portrait: Kitt quietly determined and openly hopeful, Tony full of barely restrained eagerness and unable to completely abandon his habit of cynical calculation. They were making the request together, both of them fully on board with what they were proposing, and that was good, but — 

"… I'd have to think about it," he said at last. "It's — that's quite a leap for me to make." 

Tony nodded at once. "Understood. I'm not going to be up for anything for at least another twenty-four hours —" 

"Two days," Kitt amended, and squeezed his shoulder when he opened his mouth to protest. "Take your time, Steve. We want you to be completely sure." 

Tony grinned at her. "Come on, you're telling me you couldn't use a good hard fucking right now, after the day you just had?" 

"I can wait," Kitt said firmly. She met Steve's gaze again and smiled, and this time it was sweet in a way that went straight to his bones. "After all, isn't it said that the best things in life are worth waiting for?" 

And Steve had to look briefly away, because the radiance of her green eyes was too intense for even his eagle's sight — or his lion's heart — to endure. 

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
